The Good Shepherd (54 page)

“No. No pain at all.”

For some reason, those words struck Dennis like the tolling of a funeral bell. There was no hope, no hope at all. Incredibly - he would reproach himself bitterly for it a moment later - his mind leaped beyond this claustrophobic room where death was strangling his naïve vision of the future. He saw himself writing to Helen Reed, telling her with nausea in his throat that the choice, the brutal choice must be made, and he was choosing his priesthood instead of her. But he knew even as the amputation wracked him that he alone was the sufferer, that Helen no longer needed him; she had reached that inner circle of healing love. He had reached it, too, thanks to this dying man beside him.

Matthew Mahan had closed his eyes. Within the darkness, he seemed to be voyaging across a vast sea. There was a sense of flowing, as if he walked or rode a current in its center that carried him toward a blurred horizon. At times, the sea was turbulent. He was carried up toward an angry sky on great waves of regret. One after another, his failures surged up through his soul. His brother’s wounds, which he had never healed. Monsignor O’Reilly’s hate-filled soul, which he had tried too late to purge. The young priests to whom he was at best a fool and at worst a corrupt authoritarian. Father Disalvo, with his hysterical rage. Timmy, his nephew, with his twisted heart still contorted with loss and hate. The divorced, the lonely, the poor in spirit, the lost sheep whom he had failed to seek strenuously, all the things he had never said to so many priests and friends, never warned George Petrie against the keenness of his ambition or Terry Malone against his opinionated anger or Dennis, yes, even Dennis, against his intellectual pride. So many failures. Why was there at the same time this incomprehensible peace?

He opened his eyes and saw Dennis McLaughlin’s tear-stained face. Behind him, although he knew they were not there, he saw Mary Shea and Mike Furia and Jim McAvoy, dumb but brave. Who knows what would have become of Jim if he had not helped him discover his courage in France? And Bill Reed and his daughter Helen, the last two not sad at all, but smiling. Did they already know what he had never really understood - that love was so terribly difficult, it was almost a miracle to achieve it even with a single person. What an incredible challenge the Church had taken upon herself, to tell men and women that this unique achievement should be universal and that she, the Church, would discover and teach the secrets of the spirit that make it possible.

There were other faces beside the bed now. Dennis’s friend Goggin looking frightened and a stocky, swarthy man with a black bag. He heard their voices saying disconnected words. “Exsanguination - transfusions - ambulance.” He felt the doctor’s hand on his wrist. Then the metal disk of the stethoscope pressed to his chest.

“
Ambulanza. Subito. Subito.”
Goggin was telephoning private ambulance services.

“It’s all right, Dennis, it’s all right,” Matthew Mahan whispered. “Just hold my hand.”

He felt the smaller hand inside his fingers. He tried to close them, but there was no strength left. No strength, no pain. Behind his closed eyes, he saw a wide white beach, the kind he had walked with his father as a boy. The air seemed full of bells ringing out a song of praise. Whom could it be for? Then the beach vanished. One of those fogs that used to roll in unexpectedly between sunrise and mid-morning. It was ghostly, but he was unafraid. The air was still full of bells. He heard a soldier’s voice calling, “Padre, hey padre,” and an Irish brogue greeting him with: “Matthew me boy.” Then the clipped harsh American accent of an umpire saying “Matty.” Finally, a voice that came to meet him in the mist:
“Mio figlio americano.”
My American son. With it came strong peasant hands that seized him, rough, familiar arms that crushed him to an unseen chest, while unseen lips touched his cheek. He knew that he was safe in the land of his fathers.

“
Troppo tardi, troppo tardi,”
Dennis McLaughlin heard the doctor saying. He turned and saw two big men in the doorway, with a folded stretcher between them. Goggin had found a private ambulance service. Too late. The doctor was telling them. Too late.

It was 6:00 a.m. The bells of Rome were ringing. Through the gray dawn, he could see the looming hump of St. Peter’s dome. Dennis looked down at Matthew Mahan. Strangely, he felt no grief. They had been defeated, utterly, totally defeated. But he felt no grief. Why?

Dennis spent the day filling out the endless forms that governments require when shipping a dead man across borders, finding an undertaker to prepare the body for the trip, persuading the city officials to waive an autopsy, sending cables to the archdiocese, fending off reporters with the ritual “No comment,” haggling bookings for himself and the Cardinal’s coffin on the first available flight.

The grimmest task was telling Mary Furia. She cried out with pain when she heard it. “O God, it’s my fault, my fault,” she sobbed.

“No. It was mine,” Dennis said. Then he spoke as a priest. “But really - neither one of us did it. He knew. He knew what he was doing.”

It was mid-afternoon by the time he and Goggin returned to the pensione. On the corner, Dennis picked up a newspaper that had a large headline announcing something about “Il Papa.” Goggin rapidly translated. Paul had refused to consult the Church on clerical celibacy as the Dutch bishops had requested. Celibacy “cannot be abandoned or subjected to argument,” the Pope said.

“The Emperor has spoken. But the case is not closed,” Dennis said.

“Why doesn’t somebody see that he has no clothes on?” Goggin said.

Upstairs, Matthew Mahan’s body lay on the bed. Mary Furia knelt beside him. The undertaker had dressed him in his red cassock and cape. The brown metal coffin waited in the hall flanked by two burly assistant undertakers. “I trust you are satisfied, Father,” said the undertaker, a short, fat man who sweated profusely.

“Yes,” said Dennis.

“Shall I?” the undertaker began.

“I feel the need for a ceremony,” said Goggin.

“Make it short,” said Dennis, still puzzling over why he felt no grief.

Goggin took from his pocket a small looseleaf book and paged rapidly through it. Dennis realized it was a draft of the New Gospel. Goggin stood at the foot of the bed. Mary Furia stood on the right. Dennis stood on the left. Matthew Mahan’s face was empty. Death was truly a thief, Dennis thought. It robbed everything, even the personality.

Goggin began to read.

“‘What is this talk of being a shepherd?’ the people asked Jesus. ‘We are not sheep, to be led to the trough or to slaughter as you choose.’

“‘You are sheep in your needs,’ said Jesus, ‘in the hunger of your hearts for My peace. You are sheep in your blind worship of lust and money. You are sheep in your hatreds. You are sheep in your endless fears for tomorrow. You are sheep in your loneliness. This is why I say that I am the Good Shepherd, Who sees that He must lay down His life to feed His sheep with the truth of His love. My Father loves Me because I lay down My life that you may take it up again more abundantly. No man takes My life away from Me. I am laying it down of My own will, so you may have power to take it up again. This commandment I have received from My Father.’

“A dispute rose among the people over these words.

“Many of them said: ‘He is possessed by the devil, He is mad. Why do you listen to Him?’ But others said, ‘These are not the words of the devil. Can the devil open the eyes of the blind?’”

Dennis looked out the window at St. Peter’s dome. In his pocket, his index finger slowly circled the outer spiral of his moon shell. “Amen,” he said. “Amen.”

Published by New Word City LLC, 2015
www.NewWordCity.com

© Thomas Fleming

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ISBN: 978-1-61230-840-1